


pining, smoking, and other things we do to pass time

by SoulJelly



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: "You Go Too Fast For Me", 80's references, Angry Sex, Angst, Confused!Bisexual!Shadwell, Crowley pining for Aziraphale, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 20:43:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20552417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulJelly/pseuds/SoulJelly
Summary: Soho, the 1980's. Shadwell is in denial about his sexuality. Crowley's still trying to forget a conversation he had with a certain angel twenty years earlier.





	pining, smoking, and other things we do to pass time

**Author's Note:**

> For the [Good Omens Kink Meme](https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/616.html?thread=752232#cmt752232), where I seem to have set up permanent residence. "Young Shadwell is denial about being bisexual, and Crowley's an insufferable tease giving off just enough femme vibes to make him confused and angry."

Crowley has spent the last twenty years trying to slow down.  
  
There are streets he doesn't walk any more and places he doesn't go to eat. Sometimes his body will try to remind him; he will find that his snakeskin shoes are taking a left turn instead of a right, and Crowley scowls and spins on a heel and stalks in the opposite direction until he completely forgets what it was he was doing in the first place. Crowley watches Betamax fail, tempts some politicians to play a little too liberally with cocaine, wonders if computers will properly catch on. Waits for music to become good again.  
  
Maybe he's being cynical, he thinks, as he flips open the paper to another brutal splash of photographs of the Cold War (no demonic intervention needed there) but he's stopped looking out for miracles. Knows they must be happening out there, but that's none of his business.  
  
Sometimes he lies awake and the bright lights of Soho blink beneath his eyelids. A car interior, two pairs of trembling hands passing over the same tartan flask but managing not to touch. Words he's tried to forget ring in his ears. _Too fast_ \-- His heart echoes the truth of it, a hummingbird's wingbeat against his ribcage. His thoughts, his pulse, his breath, all of it flittering and traitorous, afraid he might discorporate altogether if his body dares slows down. Crowley thinks of all the greatest writers through the centuries spilling their hearts in ink, knowing he never truly understood them until that moment.  
  
Twenty years is simultaneously no time at all to a celestial being, and a hell of a long time to be waiting. Trying to will oneself into slowness, to not reach out and caress and plead and--  
  
Tonight it's too much, and fuck it-- he needs a drink. He needs anything but the memory of Aziraphale's face imprinted behind his eyelids.  
  
It's wet and bright in London, raindrops flashing in the streetlamps like stars. There's a bar Crowley's taken a liking to, all smoke-haze and scuffed tables and frankly terrible lighting, where the music is a good kind of awful and the alcohol is dirt cheap. In short, he knows he won't be found there.  
  
He cups his hands around a lukewarm pint glass as a lanky amateur musician croons out The Smiths on a corner stage, with passion if not finesse. Crowley's wondering how many more drinks it will take before he can numb these ragged edges of himself, when there's a clink of glass and the strain of leather giving way opposite him.  
  
"Shadwell?" Crowley raises an eyebrow as the lieutant shuffles into the booth. "Long time no see."  
  
Shadwell nods a greeting, fingers performing some dextrous flicker as he presses the remains of his cigarette into the ashtray. Now _there_ was something Crowley never thought would catch on. He'd been more than a little mistaken. His nose wrinkles and he pointedly ignores the crumbling pile.  
  
"Thought it was you," says Shadwell. Years of living in London have done nothing to temper that thick accented drawl. "Just thought, while I'm seeing you, if I could ask for a quick update on--"  
  
"I've amended the payroll to include your newest recruit." Crowley lifts his glass, takes a long, considered sip. "Please wish Mr..."  
  
"Kettle," says Shadwell, not quite meeting Crowley's eyes. "Witchfinder Private."  
  
"Right. Wish him a long and prosperous career with yourselves on my behalf." Crowley goes to say something else, something like _that'll be all then? Nice seeing you_, but he realises his glass is empty and Shadwell is already calling to the waitstaff for another.  
  
"You'll be having the same again?" asks Shadwell, and Crowley finds himself nodding.  
  
Crowley sprawls in his seat, fingertips dangling from the edge of the booth. He can't miss the looks Shadwell casts him. He's seen that look reflected in the eyes of the freshly-tempted; afraid, too, that he's seen it in himself, in the wing-mirror of his Bentley, the reflection of a bookshop window. It's a look of someone walking on a cliff edge and wondering if they could really, actually, fall. Whether it's just a case of when.  
  
The drinks arrive. Pint for Crowley, and for Shadwell a squat glass of something amber-dark in ice. They're set down again, empty, in record time. Rinse and repeat.  
  
Now Crowley's noticing, really paying attention, tapping into that demonic sixth sense which lets him see the dark parts of humanity, all the better to exploit them. He's perusing these emotions like a catalogue, seeing them in the uncomfortable tilt of Shadwell's shoulders, the way his lips purse again his glass, the way he rambles small-talk in awkward, staccato bursts. It's a potent mix of loneliness, shame, discomfort and... Well.  
  
For Shadwell's part, he's letting the alcohol flood warmth into him, welcomes its ebbing from his throat to his stomach and beyond. He keeps peering into the gloom of the bar, watching the men and women walk past. The glint of earrings, bangles, zippers. Legs striding in too-tight jeans. Hair that's just long enough to twirl around a finger, to brush away from the nape of a neck. Somewhere in the past decade girls started looking like boys and boys started to look like girls, in a way that's brought too many uncomfortable truths to the surface.  
  
Because Shadwell-- Shadwell is looking at both. _Looking._  
  
And he's looking at Crowley too, who is all hips and angles in a cut jacket and skinny jeans. Whose fire-red hair is long enough to do all manner of sordid things with, like wind in his fist whilst he... Shadwell is glad for the darkness and for how the table hides the tenting in his trousers. Crowley takes another sip of his pint and his glasses slide just lightly down the bridge of his nose - there's a faint smidge of eyeliner there. Shadwell licks his lips.  
  
Is it deliberate, the way Crowley leans across the tabletop, brushes a strand of hair from his face and worries his lower lip with his teeth? Over the years Shadwell has noticed odd little affections which speak of a certain... feminine energy. _Not quite a pansy,_ Shadwell thinks derisively _but definitely something going on there._ Sometimes he wears shirts or jewellery that Shadwell has sworn he's seen on women. He’s probably even… Shadwell is hit with a staggering intrusive image of Crowley on his knees, hands working a belt buckle and fly, mouth pressed to the hard bulge of—  
  
“You all right?”  
  
An eyebrow lifts above those dark glasses and Shadwell splutters as his brain tries to reconcile the image of the man before him with the one in his errant thoughts.  
  
“Aye, it’s fine.” He struggles to his feet, head spinning slightly. “Need a smoke.” He's vanished into the darkness before Crowley can reply.  
  
The cold air's so sharp it stings a little, snapping the edges off the alcohol in his system. He feels better out here, sucking smoke into his lungs like it's oxygen and bracing himself with one hand against the rough, wet brick wall. Shadwell wonders when it will be safe to go home, when the harlot in the flat across will be done with her client. Wonders when he'll be able to lie in bed without stroking himself, ears strained for sounds of the Jezebel and the handsome stranger with his stubble-scratched chin. Shudders as he recalls the low, masculine groan which finally made him spill clumsily over his fist. _It's all her fault,_ he thinks, _putting these thoughts in my head._ He's giving his life to the witchfinder cause. There's no time for this.  
  
And he _isn't_ a _pansy_.  
  
Footsteps sound in the shadowed alley.  
  
It's Crowley again, slinking against the wall, deliberately casual as he adjusts his glasses. Shadwell feels watched, even though he knows the other man must not be able to see him clearly through the twice-dark. If he understood the capabilities of demonic vision he would feel differently.  
  
_Is it really tempting,_ Crowley asks himself, yellow eyes picking out a clear outline of Shadwell's trembling hands and bulging cock, _If you're giving someone what they want?_ He's done worse after all, the M25 for one. He's due for a quick temptation next week, giving some guy a bit of inspiration on a song he's working on, some terribly cheesey thing that's sure to stick in people's heads for years to come. Crowley's heart's not really in it, but it's another box for Downstairs to check off. He hasn't felt much enthusiasm for his demonic deeds at all in the past twenty years, if he's being honest with himself. After all, too many exuberant wiles and someone might stop by to thwart them. Crowley's heart might beat so rapidly in his chest -- _too fast, too fast_ \-- that he might not be able to stop himself from fucking it all up again.  
  
"Yer following me or something?" Shadwell grunts. Flicks some ash from his cigarette.  
  
"Just out for some air." As though to emphasis the point, Crowley inhales, cold and sharp. He runs a hand through his hair and shifts a step with his body. The movement is brief, so innocuously sensual in a way that's so confusingly, infuriatingly _appealing_ that there's no space for Shadwell to think in the time he's closed the gap between them and pressed Crowley up against the wall.  
  
The cigarette glow blinks out in the rain-flecked cobbles. Neither of them notice.  
  
"I don't know what you're playing at," snarls Shadwell, angry in ways he can't comprehend, aroused in ways he can't acknowledge. "Following me, trying to-- to--"  
  
Crowley wants the opposite of slowness. He wants so much distance between himself and soft manicured hands, gentle words, bright eyes full of fear, that he can forget about all of those things for ten blessed minutes.  
  
So he smirks a little, shifts just _so_ to align himself with Shadwell's hips and asks, brazen, "Yeah? You're the one who brought me a drink."

It's messy and rough and just what Crowley wanted.  
  
There's no intimacy to it, nothing beyond the clumsy scrape of Shadwell's smoke-and-liqueur mouth caught on Crowley's lower lip. There's nothing but greed in the way Crowley pulls their bodies closer, writhing and grinding, heat building beneath all the layers of their clothes. They aren't deterred by the inclement weather, barely even notice the sibilant rainfall.  
  
There's Crowley's hands beneath Shadwell's shirt as he mumbles obscene things. He's breathy and goading as he explores the flat plane of stomach and wiry hair peppered over Shadwell's chest. Shadwell struggles to slip his hands beneath the waistband of Crowley's jeans, kneads the curve of his ass with exploratory fingertips. There'll be bruises tomorrow, blossoming on both of them, a perfect ache.  
  
The desire rolling off Shadwell heats Crowley to his core. He basks in it, opening his demonic senses to a heady cocktail of emotions that sets sparks off in him. He's never seen Hellfire created before but he thinks -- as much as he can think, at this current moment -- that something like this must be part of the process. Lust, pride, wrath- Shadwell's almost going seven for seven on the Deadlies, his mind distantly quips. Then Shadwell moves his mouth to a sensitive spot at Crowley's neck, rolls the flesh into his mouth and sucks hard. Crowley exhales, a high keening moan, one hand gripping the back of Shadwell's head and the other fisting around his cock. Shadwell is slick already, hard as anything, grunting and pistoning his hips into the contact.  
  
"Faster," he urges Crowley in a voice wrung scratchy and raw.  
  
Crowley's been wanting to hear those words for so long, what does it matter they're from the wrong lips?  
  
He obliges, tightens his hold, palm hot and slick. Shadwell has one rough hand against his thigh now, Crowley's tight jeans worked open, and then closes fingers over his cock, mirroring Crowley's movements with a frantic pace like he can't afford to stop and think about this for even a moment. His other hand winds in Crowley's hair with a satisfied sigh as though fulfilling a long-held need, and Crowley leans gratefully into the pain of it.  
  
Shadwell finishes with a choked sort of sound and Crowley follows not long afterwards. He tilts forward without meaning to, breathing ragged, sweat-damp hair sticking to the crook of Shadwell's neck.  
  
In an instant Shadwell rights himself. His manner slips so quickly into the brusque and familiar that Crowley isn't even offended. He almost miracles away the mess, just on instinct, but stops himself. There's a fraction of a pause as they distance themselves and smooth out their clothes.  
  
Crowley isn't one for awkwardness. He shrugs his jacket into place, tips his head. He doesn't exactly feel better, but he wasn't expecting as much. Maybe, he thinks, he won't even miracle away his hangover tomorrow. Maybe he deserves to ride this one out. He wants home, bed, coffee, familiar houseplants, an absence of feeling.  
  
Shadwell stands rigid. His chest heaves, traitorous body refusing to level its breathing out. His gaze skips about in desperate search of a focal point. He's immensely thankful for the other man's dark glasses and the reprieve from eye contact they provide him.  
  
"Be seeing you," Crowley says, sudden and casual. Like he's done this before. Like maybe, given the right circumstances, he'd do it again.  
  
In the time it takes Shadwell to blink away an errant raindrop, Crowley has vanished into the bright lights of Soho.


End file.
